


summer heat was left in my eyes

by youtiao



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Character Study, Falling In Love, God!Kuroo, M/M, god AU, human!bokuto, literally...... if you mashed greek gods with haikyuu and then added an asian spin on it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-13 00:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18021266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youtiao/pseuds/youtiao
Summary: “Was that awolf?” He rips his gaze from the characters forming on his bloody hand, closing his fist. Koutarou stands, right in front of the sun, and it forms a halo around his face. His hair looks like white fire, struck through with black. His eyes are wide— but they are always wide, he reminds himself.He looks magical.Tetsurou laughs. “You think?” He doesn’t say it mockingly, like a poor joke, like he might to someone else; but Koutarou takes it as that and cracks up. He bends at the waist, clutching his knees as he laughs, and Tetsurou cannot tear his gaze away from the snow-haired man with eyes like coins and a smile brighter than the fucking sun.-He is a god, he’s lived a thousand lifetimes—in every single one of which he’s loved Koutarou.





	summer heat was left in my eyes

**Author's Note:**

> note for the mcd warning; a major character dies but comes back to life. if you'd like to skip, stop reading at "Gods, he thinks, are so weak." and start again at "They say it ends not with a bang, but a whimper."   
> anyways i wrote this in 2016 for another fandom, but it never got finished/published so i cleaned it up and inserted bkr. enjoyyy lol

When Tetsurou is a thousand years old, he works in a tavern.

“Son!” The old man’s throat is filled with rocks, rocks that grate against each other as he speaks. He hobbles over like his spine, too, is a tower of the smooth flat rocks one can find by the beach, stacked precariously on top of each other. “Why don’t’cha take a break, I’ll handle th’rest.”

Old is relative. A child kicks their legs, stomach grumbling, but their parents’ attention is fixed the bottle of flaming alcohol in front of them. How many years have they seen, standing no taller than his knees? Their three is a mere thirtieth of the old man’s hundred, which in turn is but one tenth of Tetsurou’s thousand.

Tetsurou smiles at the old owner, and wipes his hands. The clean plates go into the basin on top of the hot coals, and he leans against the sill. It’s an evening in the middle of summer when the nights are warm and the air is heavy with the smell of ripe fruit. He’s seen, he’s lived through a thousand of these but it’s different every time— different fruits, different colours, different heat.

Around midnight the tavern is full to bursting, and his hands are splotchy with the oil that jumps up when he fries mushrooms. His skin is hot, and his skin bubbles from a particularly large splash of oil. _Be careful, son_ , the old man had tsked, pressing a soaked towel to his hand. Oh, but Tetsurou has thick skin, and he digs his fingernail into the reddened skin just to feel a little.

And morning comes. Shouyou, whom he’s only met once, barrels across the sky in his flaming carriage. Too far to see from the little tavern on the hill, but Tetsurou can hear the tiny sun god’s laughter, bright and clear and loud as he whoop-de-whoops on his horses made of clouds across the pinkening sky. He’s always excited in the summers, to the moon god’s chagrin, forcing them out early in the morning and clinging on late in the evenings.

Morning comes. Or more accurately, night goes, and Tetsurou ducks under the kitchen’s too-short doorway into the main area of the tavern. He ducks, but he still bumps his head, straightening up too early. His forehead throbs for a moment. And someone laughs, he hears someone laugh.

Their hair is the colour of snow.

-

Tetsurou is the god of wanderers.

Tetsurou is a strange god, meant to protect strange things. He’s meant to stay in one place. He’s meant to mark an ending (and a beginning, for with most endings there is a new beginning), meant to be the sign at a fork in the road that tells you where to go next. But a wanderer’s journey is lifelong, and their death is their end and with this kind of end there is no other beginning. And wanderers do not use _roads_.

He is told to fit himself into the hole in the wall that is visible to everybody except him.

He is the god of wanderers, meant to be a guide to those who only ever travel alone, meant to be a road sign to those who don’t even use roads. He is meant to be what wanderers seek, but wanderers do not wander in search for something.

So when he is told to fit himself into the hole in the invisible wall that everybody else can see, he does.

So a thousand years pass, and he grows old, pretending to be a road sign in the middle of nowhere.

-

He sits at the tavern’s bar and breaks mushrooms into pieces with his chopsticks. He fried these ones himself, the dark brown ones with thin blackish veins on their thick spongey heads and short, chewy stump. They sizzle with tiny poufs of steam when he breaks them open. Until, until the pieces become so small he can no longer break them with his chopsticks and he picks up the piece with his fingers and is about to split it with his thumb nail when—

When the person, the boy with the snow-coloured hair, the boy with the laugh that was not pretty or dignified but not ugly either, sidles up to the bar and swings his legs onto the seat next to Tetsurou. There are streaks of grey in his hair. And though Tetsurou wondered if the glow of the lanterns had perhaps altered the colour of the man’s hair, for he looked too young to be greying so much already. But with the lanterns doused, for the sun had already risen (he can, over the crackling of the fire and the bubbling of the well, hear Shouyou), his hair is a shocking white, pewter grey shooting through it. In the sun, Tetsurou imagines it must look—

Snow covered mountains, he thinks.

“You’re the chef, aren’t you?” The old man puts down a plate of baked fish skewers.

Tetsurou cocks his head, propping his elbow on the table. Of course, this time of day after the morning regulars are all gone, and the afternooners haven’t yet arrived— the tavern is silent. And this, he likes this, the single quiet moment between all the loud ones. He will stand at the kitchen’s large window, lean over the window sill, burn his eyes with the sun that reflects off the water. He will sit at the bar, hunched over, picking apart mushrooms.

The man crunches right through the body of the fish. “Yeah,” replies Tetsurou. He finishes off his mushrooms, but they’ve gone cold, feeling clammy on his tongue. He’s supposed to be in the back, helping the old man scrub dishes or mop the floor. Soon, he says to himself.

But soon, the afternoon customers will arrive, trudging through the door with heavy shoulders and tired eyes. They will order spiced nuts and pickled beets and small roasted birds. He will rush around the kitchen that feels busy despite being occupied by only him and the old man, he will crouch outside the tavern slowly turning the fish until it’s crispy on all sides, he will burn his finger tips seeing if the coals are hot enough and he will stack oily plates in the basin full of water, making sure there’s enough space.

He meets gold coin eyes. A wide mouth, probably good for smiling. Good for laughing. Shouyou’s got one of those, and all his smiles come off so genuine and happy.

“I love your fish,” the man says.

Tetsurou picks up his plate and shuffles into the kitchen. He makes sure to duck.

-

“Why are you working here?” asks the snow-haired man—his name, his name is Bokuto Koutarou—one day, arms crossed on the bartop as Tetsurou lines up all the old man’s alcohol. Koutarou’s eyes are warm in the lanternlight, gold melting into something liquidy and hot. (Tetsurou wants to put his fingers in it.)

Tetsurou quirks an eyebrow. “Why am I working _here_ , at the tavern, or why am I working at all?” His lips pull into something amused when Koutarou laughs— not pretty, not dignified, but not ugly. Perhaps it’s grown on him the past few day-night cycles.

(“I just realised I’ve been referring to you as ‘the cook with the dumb hair’ in my head,” Koutarou had said a few nights ago, face blushed courtesy of the few cups of sake Tetsurou’s poured into him. Sprawled over the bartop, looking up at Tetsurou through his lashes. His lashes are pale like his hair. “I’m Bokuto. Bokuto Koutarou.”

Tetsurou had poured him another cup of sake and pocketed the gold. “Kuro,” he’d said, after a beat, giving into Koutarou’s blurry, liquid gold eyes. Soft hands and whispered words and giggles. _Your hair is so dark. So black._ “You can call me Kuro.”)

He asks, though he knows he has no answer to give if Koutarou chooses, because he too asks himself the same thing— why, why here? Why stand at an invisible fork in an invisible path, contorted into the shape of a road sign like he’s told to, waiting for people who will never come? He has no answers for unposed questions.

“Don’t you have anything better to do than keep little old me company?” Tetsurou says, out of the corner of his mouth, smoothing down an unsticked label with his thumb. Koutarou’s laughter is bright and sharp, like sunlight through a cut in the wall.

-

Tetsurou’s got a little box in his head full of Koutarou. He scratches a line into a shard of wood for every time Koutarou saunters into the tavern, snow-coloured hair sticking up like he’s been struck by Nishinoya— the deity of thunderstorms, the younguns say. Tetsurou’s met Noya, too, from before he became Asahi’s champion, with eyes that gleamed like two miniature suns and skin that crackled with lightning. _Deity of thunderstorms, huh?_ The lines on the wood shard begin to blur together. Like it’s been attacked by a cat.

In his quiet moments, leaning out of the window so far he feels he could touch the glass surface of the river, slouching against the side of the tavern with grass tickling his ankles, he peers into the box. Koutarou— his eyes grow paler in the sun, which is nothing like anything Tetsurou’s seen in his thousand years of life, like— clear gold. A gold river, but not like the Yellow River in the Middle Country. They expand in the dark, and glow a little, with a long pupil like a bird’s. Koutarou dislikes mushrooms, but he’ll happily eat the fatty, crispy bits clinging to the side of the pot.

He thinks about Koutarou’s mouth as he slices peaches into a jar. The inside of the peach is the same colour as his lips.

-

He’s leaning over the sill again. The jars of pickled vegetables are shoved to one side of the sill, throwing coloured light over the floor like church stained glass does. His ribs ache from being pressed against hard wood so long, and he thinks to go reorganise the stocks when he hears the sound of strings. He hears someone singing, voice— their voice is not low but not high either, just... Full. Full, like biting into a ripe fruit, the juice running down your chin, and someone laughs and wipes it away and sneaks a bite. Their gold eyes widen like plates.

Apparently he stares out the window so often even the customers know of this particular habit of his.

[ _“Years may pass but your shadow won’t fade_ ](https://youtu.be/v9wrDGfYCWA)  
[ _It only invites more emotions_ ](https://youtu.be/v9wrDGfYCWA)  
[ _Crouching all alone, I drew a picture_ ](https://youtu.be/v9wrDGfYCWA)

[ _Under a blazing sun, on a hilly road,_ ](https://youtu.be/v9wrDGfYCWA)  
[ _We walked, blurry figures,_ ](https://youtu.be/v9wrDGfYCWA)  
[ _The summer heat was left in my eyes,”_ ](https://youtu.be/v9wrDGfYCWA)

He settles down again, on his elbows this time. The melody is something familiar.

[ _“Years may pass but I’ll never die_ ](https://youtu.be/v9wrDGfYCWA)  
[ _I repeat hopeful words to myself_ ](https://youtu.be/v9wrDGfYCWA)  
[ _Even though you’re still not here,”_ ](https://youtu.be/v9wrDGfYCWA)

Snow should look out of place in summer like this but Koutarou stands at the bend of the river, so close it jumps up to touch his toes, and his white hair is a clean shock against all the soft ripe colours. He waves his arms when he talks and it fascinates Tetsurou some more when he finds out it’s the same as he sings, just more...

[ _“Unable to do anything_ ](https://youtu.be/v9wrDGfYCWA)  
[ _I merely indulged myself in life_ ](https://youtu.be/v9wrDGfYCWA)  
[ _‘If the summer can show us dreams,_ ](https://youtu.be/v9wrDGfYCWA)  
[ _Let's go to before you were taken away,’”_ ](https://youtu.be/v9wrDGfYCWA)

The old man clatters into the kitchen, arms full of greasy plates. “What got’cha all doozy today, son?” His eyebrows knit together, and he toddles over to the window and peers outside, craning his neck. Tetsurou just laughs, stretching his back with a crack, and goes to scrub the dishes.

Koutarou’s already moved away, skipping stones as he sings.

-

The tavern sits on a small hill— no, not a hill, just a tiny rise in the slope of the earth, but it boosts the building high enough that he can gaze at the river that twists through the village as he works. In the squid-ink of the sky and in the mirror surface of the river, the moon blooms bright like the fruit that hang heavy from the thin branches of the trees. Stars in the sky, flower petals in the water.

Yes, it’s an evening in the summer, and his summer so full of days just like this Tetsurou is unsure of which day it is. Just like this, rising with the sun and— well, he doesn’t quite sleep, but days like this with beer splashing on his wrists and grape skins sour on his teeth as he works the sloshy gooshy insides to a pulp. He doesn’t quite sleep, and night time is just a longer, darker, day time, so. It’s difficult to keep track, sometimes.

How many days has it been?

Koutarou bursts through the tavern door with a cheery yell, and Tetsurou does not think about it any further.

-

_“Kuro, look, a shooting star!”_

-

Iwa sends him a wolf one day.

It’s late summer; and though Matsukawa’s taken his time in coming, he can feel the phantom chill of autumn. Fruit lies on the ground between the roots of their trees, holes gnawed into their sides by the bugs that scuttle over the dry dirt and between grass stalks. Leaves flutter on their branches, desperate to hold on despite the winds that tug at their ends.

Tetsurou’s smoking sweet potatoes over an open fire when the wolf comes to him. It walks, purposefully, never a step out of place. Green eyes, not yellow, that feel more intelligent than some of the humans he serves on the daily. He supposes it’s just a combination of things that lets one tell straightaway that it’s one of Iwa’s wolves.

Late summer smells sweet. (Rotten peaches that break open with a tap of his toe. Blueberries fat and heavy on the brittle branches of their bushes. Rich red cherries beginning to brown. The river looks pink sometimes, with all the fruit fallen inside.)

He stands up to greet the wolf. He knows Iwa does not care for formalities like the other older gods—gods younger than the war god himself—, but. (It just seems wrong to squat, rolling a stick piercing a potato, in front of a creature like that.) It stands tall, pelt gleaming in the midafternoon sun. The cord around its neck holds a knife and is strung with large colourful beads.

“I’ve received your message,” Tetsurou murmurs, and unhooks the blade.

He looks at the tiny blade only when the wolf’s bounded away, lean silver body going over a bend in the earth and disappearing. It’s small and shiny and wickedly sharp, so when he slides the tip over his palm in an X, it takes a moment for the blood to spill.

_I know you’re at Nobu’s tavern. War coming your way. Fast. From West, six rises from when Yong reaches you. Sorry this couldn’t have come earlier, busy holding them back. Get out of there._

“Was that a _wolf_?” He rips his gaze from the characters forming on his bloody hand, closing his fist. Koutarou stands, right in front of the sun, and it forms a halo around his face. His hair looks like white fire, struck through with black. His eyes are wide— _but they are always wide_ , he reminds himself.

He looks magical.

Tetsurou laughs. “You think?” He doesn’t say it mockingly, like a poor joke, like he might to someone else; but Koutarou takes it as that and cracks up. He bends at the waist, clutching his knees as he laughs, and Tetsurou cannot tear his gaze away from the snow-haired man with eyes like coins and a smile brighter than the fucking sun.

 _The sun must’ve been messing with my eyes_ , Koutarou says. (He knows Shouyou can’t do that— he can burn, he can blind, and he drives the sun across the sky every day. Elemental gods have such unwieldy powers for how important they’re supposed to be.) _No, no, entertain the fact there was a wolf_ , he says. _Kuro knows how to talk to wolves?_ Koutarou says.

“Your potatoes are burning,” he says. Tetsurou had smelled them, a charred taste lodged in the back of his mouth. But so stuck staring at Koutarou he hadn’t— hadn’t— “If the wolf comes back, tell him I said hi,” Koutarou says, smile shaped like a banana, and he waves with his whole arm as he skips back into the tavern.

Like the wolf, Tetsurou only looks away when Koutarou disappears ‘round the corner. (When he disappears the world seems to darken, and though he knows it’s just the sun setting— ”Shouyou, you fucking slow shit,” “Ahh, ahh, I’m sorry, come on Tsu _ki_ —”) He opens his palm and now it’s too dark to read, so he shuffles over to the dying fire and lights it again.

 _Please stay safe_ , the smeared words in his palm say. They feel like an afterthought.

-

He doesn’t _get out of there_ like Iwa tells him to. No, he doesn’t, because he forgets about the blood message until later (he’s not even sure how many days, how many rises), memory full of just alcohol and fried food and Koutarou for a while. Koutarou’s telling a story about his— sisters? Koutarou’s standing on a table, other patrons drumming a beat as he swings around and sings an old song from his home village. Koutarou’s slumped over the bar, whining slurrily because Tetsurou won’t _gimme more sake, pleaseeee, Tetsurou’s so meeeeeean, I want more._

And when he remembers he is kneeling, again, over an open fire, this time roasting the walnuts the old man’s kept in storage. _Got a bad feeling, son_ , he says, when Tetsurou asks him why. This time, he’s holding the nuts over the fire, shells cracked off and burning embers. But instead of bolting up—

—Like when he was eighteen, eighteen human years old, and he’d told the people of his village that enemies were coming, they’d just laughed. They’d laughed, and he wandered amongst their faceless corpses a few days later.

Like when he was three hundred something human years and he told the priest of the plague rolling across the land and he’d gotten exorcised, days and days of excruciating pain that stopped only when the Blood Plague got to them—

—instead of bolting up, he stayed there, stooped over his slowly browning walnuts. He turns them on the side and inhales deeply. They wouldn’t believe him.

They’d never believed him, so why would they now?

-

Koutarou believes him.

He sits down on the hill overlooking the fields and thinks, this must be the fifth night, and the moon god’s carriage is round in the sky like a snail shell. The wind is playful, dancing amongst the leaves, quivering and shivering and trying to hold onto their branches. He sniffs deeply, though the wind is travelling east to west and he can only smell the souring fruit. A grace for the fighters— something nice to smell as their necks are cut.

(The air would be so heavy with blood they wouldn’t even be able to smell it.)

“Kuro?” Koutarou, snowflake hair and gold coin eyes, he comes up behind. His face is white from the moon, eyes pale. “What are you doing here?” he asks. He stands next to Tetsurou, so close his leg brushes Tetsurou’s arm. _Why aren’t you at the tavern?_

Wordlessly, he tugs Koutarou down until he’s sitting. Koutarou’s shadow is silver-blue, and for a moment, he thinks of wintertime. He lies down, and the ground is cool on his back, and so is the grass that tickles his face.

“If I were to tell you that something bad is coming,” he starts, thinking about the Blood Plague, about the army that cut off their victims’ faces as trophies; thinking about Koutarou writhing on the floor as his blood leaves him, about Koutarou’s— He shudders, gagging at the thought, and Koutarou lays a hand on his shoulder. His pale eyes lit by the moon carriage seem so, so old. “Would you run away?”

The _run away with me_ goes unsaid.

And some selfish part in Tetsurou—ha, selfish part; he’d thought all the bitter human emotions had leached out of him already—urges Koutarou to say _I would_ , to protect himself, to say _yes_ —

_I would run away with you._

-

Koutarou believes him, but in the end, he doesn’t run away. He takes Tetsurou’s hand and pulls him off the cold ground, uncharacteristically quiet. It irritates him, but Koutarou’s grip is firm and he carries Tetsurou back to the tavern, body solid and warm against him. _How long until it’s not?_ a traitorous voice in his head leers. _How long until he, too, joins the dirt, cold and hard and bloody?_

The old man seems his age for once, face gaunt and hands trembly. _Something bad is coming_ , he says, hushed.

 _I know_ , Tetsurou replies, and closes his eyes. _I know_.

He can hear Koutarou’s voice in the main area, loud and light and joking, but he can’t make out the words.

-

_Would you run away with me?_

_I would run away with you—_

_if I could—_

_but I can’t._

_Why not?_

_You know why, Kuro._

-

When the first person fell, the sun hadn’t even risen yet.

Now—

“Run, run, fucking _run!_ ” he roars, desperation rounding his eyes and streaking his voice. The rain pounds down in buckets, making everything boggy and slippery. It’s not even real rain, he can see Shouyou’s carriage swimming across the sky behind their transparent storm clouds. The grate of swords is louder than his voice.

When Iwa sees him, his eyes narrow and his mouth opens in a shout that Tetsurou doesn’t hear. His armour is tattered, shimmering with magic, and his tanned skin is brown with blood. His spear more red than silver, dipped in life, but it is still sharp and it cuts through the rain like it’s solid. People scream, struggling away from Iwa’s wolves as they catch the villagers in their teeth gently to take them away from the battle.

“Get out of here!” Iwa screams.

He falls back to the tavern. It’s empty, save for— “What the hell are you _doing_?” he says to the old man, who’s sitting atop a barrel in the kitchen. Eyes closed, as if at peace, at peace despite the cries and the rain and the dissonant clashing of metal outside. No answer. The wooden floor pricks his bare feet; his sandals had gotten washed away a long time ago, rain and mud and half-dead men tearing at the hems of his pants. The mud had sucked them all in, dead and undead, all to die and be buried in the end.

He’s prepared to sling the man over his shoulder when bony hands on his arm stop him. “Leave me, son,” he says, thin and grated. “Koutarou got everyone out.” His eyes open, a slit, and Tetsurou notices just how bright the blue of his eyes are. Like the ocean on a sunny day. “I’m glad you’re safe. He was worried.” He doesn’t need to name names for Tetsurou to get it. “You should leave too, son.

“I’ve lived long,” and his eyes sparkle.

The back wall of the tavern explodes inwards, and Tetsurou—

He runs.

-

 _Gods_ , he thinks, _are so weak_.

-

He runs and runs and runs, following the silver pelted wolves that the rain’s turned gray-brown, like common forest wolves and not the war god Iwa’s. The mud comes to mid-calf and each step sucks him down like a fast path to the Underworld. (He knows Asahi’s realm does not lie alongside the humans’, for they, wrought with grief and sorrow, may try to bring back what’s already rightfully Death’s.) He’s up to his knees in mud now.

The rain comes down harder. Tetsurou can’t see, he loses sight of Iwa’s wolves, the world whiting out and turning a muddy blue-grey. A blue-grey curtain. But it isn’t so loud anymore.

He can hear Koutarou’s voice, but amidst the thundering rain, he can’t make out the words. (He doesn’t have to, no— he doesn’t quite have to, because three more heavy steps forward and then he can see Koutarou—)

He stops.

A pale elf holds Koutarou up by the hair, sharp nails digging into his scalp, snow-coloured hair turned pink. Koutarou looks like a limp, bloody doll in their grasp.

“Oh?” the elf murmurs. It sounds like a thunderbolt. “What do we have here?” They swing toward Tetsurou, standing taller than a tree; and their sword is easily the height of a young child. Koutarou’s eyes open. They are so dull, pupils blurring. His eyebrows crease as he tries to focus on Tetsurou.

 _Kuro_ , his lips say. They curve. _Run away._

(He can’t _move._ )

A soft smile. His eyes flutter shut, snowflake lashes limp on his cheeks.

_I’m glad you’re safe._

-

Tetsurou isn’t a particularly strong god.

(He’s the god of wanderers, after all: meant to guide those who don’t need guides, meant to stay in one place yet wander too, a living paradox. What sort of powers would a wanderer god need?)

They say one gets stronger when their loved ones are in danger.

— _Loved ones?_ —

He does not pause to take breaths as he hacks at the elf with his knife. _How dare you, how dare you, how dare you_ — The ocean roaring in his head drowns out everything— the rain, the elf’s screams (in the beginning), the squelch of mud. All he hears is roaring. All he tastes his blood. All he feels—

“Kuro,” someone says, wrapping their arms around his. “Kuro, stop. They’re dead. They’re dead already, Kuro.” Koutarou’s body is hot now, chest burning like a fire against Tetsurou’s back. “Kuro,” he says. “You can stop now.”

 _How dare you, how dare you, how dare you how dare you howdareyouhowdareyouhowdareyou_ —

“They hurt you,” he whispers, sinking to his knees. Is it rain on his face, or tears? (Is the rain warm?) Why is it so warm? “They hurt you,” he repeats, and feels empty as the elf’s body is sucked beneath the mud. He pulls Koutarou close to him, and his skin is so hot, his blood running so hot, spilling like a hot spring.

Koutarou’s smile is faint. “It doesn’t hurt all that much, actually,” he says, and it’s weak. The blood that flows out froths in the rain, pumping out with every breath. _Don’t breathe_ , he wants to say, but that’s stupid, when did he become so stupid? _Don’t die_.

“Don’t leave me,” he begs, blabber spilling from his mouth, head so so empty like the sky. Koutarou’s eyes slide closed and he shakes him—stupid, the wounds jostle and begin foaming again— _please, please, please don’t leave me_ — “Kou, I—” _can’t_ stand _this world without you_ —

_A thousand years you’ve lived and you cannot even save a simple human _, someone sneers in his head. _What use is a god, if he cannot even save the ones he loves?_ __

-

“I love you, Kuro—”

 _No, don’t say that, don’t_ — “Tetsurou. My name is Tetsurou.”

“Love you, Tetsu...”

-

They say it ends not with a bang, but a whimper.

(Tetsurou screams.)

-

The war god Iwa emerges victorious at the Battle of the Peach River, though not without severe injuries. His temples stack high with gifts and offerings, people pouring in to offer their well wishes and thanks. And some mourning families say their lost ones have visited in their dreams to assure them they’ve made it to Asahi’s— and the Underworld’s doors wreath in smoke, smoke from the burning of their loved ones’ belongings.

(Nobody sees the wanderer god Tetsurou.)

-

“You cannot grieve forever,” someone says, when the snow begins to slide off the frozen branches and new buds push out from underneath the ice. They emit cold, mere presence thickening the ice weighing down his shoulders. Short black hair crusted with frost, eyes deep deep blue. _Keiji_ , his mind fills in for him. _Suga’s champion. God of winter. One of the Fates._

A good thing about being a god? He will never die.

“Try me,” he says, and his voice is hoarse from a whole winter of silence.

A bad thing— no, the worst thing about being a god?

He will never die.

-

A flower by his foot pokes from the frozen earth. _Resilient_ , he thinks. The days pass like seconds. Other flowers poke out of the frozen ground, shocks of green against an eternity of white white white. He watches it grow, and grow, and grow, and he thinks, _how resilient_.

When it blooms the petals are white, streaked through with grey, and a gold core.

He lifts his foot and crushes it.

-

“You miss him,” someone says, in that matter-of-fact way that used to irk Tetsurou. Nothing can quite stir up a feeling in him anymore, and he avoids moving altogether because he is so cold he can’t feel his limbs. He thinks, _missing him is the only thing I do nowadays_. His throat is tight (feels too tight for him to say it).

Summer is supposed to thaw things.

(Isn’t it?)

The Fate that visits him now is the short, slight one. The yellow hair to Keiji’s black, summer red robes to ice blue. They don’t quite pay him attention, sharp yellow eyes focused on a spiderweb of strings strung between all their fingers. Red, too. Keiji has blue-white ones.

They’re always so focused on their strings.

He wonders how they keep finding him. (It’s bad enough his only useful power, as a wanderer god, is to be unable to be found.) He wonders what they want with him.

Kenma gets up and leaves, footfalls light as a cat’s.

-

Tetsurou has a temple, just like all gods do. Most of the bigger gods have more than one, built by their followers. But every god, major or minor, has at least one. (He only has one. Wanderers are too light footed to stay in one place long enough to build their god a temple. But he’s fine with that.) Infused with their magic and spirit, blah blah blah.

And instead of transporting himself there by, say, a water door, or any other quicker method, Tetsurou gets up and stretches. He’ll walk there. (A god that cannot save anyone is nothing more than a human.) Though he’s not quite sure where his temple is, he starts walking anyways.

It takes a while. (How long, he doesn’t quite know. A few days? A few years? A few decades? Gods don’t age, and gods don’t die, so he doesn’t know.)

He is a wanderer, you know.

-

He hums as he sweeps the path; broom fashioned of the hollow reeds that had, one day, sprung up suddenly by the bubbling stream near his temple. Barefoot, the sunny stones are warm and shaded grass is cool. Even in summer, the mountain air is breezy and thin. But the temple, made of stone, warms up easy in the sun, and he’s spent his fair share of days curled up in a patch of sunlight like a housecat.

Suga had said one’s temple is infused with their essence, or something like that— he hadn’t quite been listening, and had set off without a glance at it, itching to move. His power, really, is just to be lost and not found. His wanderlust, so hungry he’d thought of it like a beast, had calmed the moment he stepped foot inside. And in the five hundred (or so) years since the Battle of the Peach River, he’d enjoyed the quiet, the peace, the aloneness. No humans, no gods. No meddling from frost-haired and red-robed Fates.

Five hundred years have passed since he arrived at his temple. He keeps count now, the hidden back wall marked up with numbers for every sunrise. He knows it’s not accurate, because he wakes some days and it is well into the afternoon, and he lays his head back down because he’s too lazy to get up. That day goes uncounted. Days go uncounted. He sleeps through the days and wakes up at night to see the moonflowers bloom silver and pour his worries to the stars. if Tadashi hears him, they don’t come to him. They can’t _find_ him.

How long can a god sleep?

He braids crowns of the moonflowers.

A god’s memories is not like a human’s, because a human loses their memories like they lose material objects.

(He remembers the throb of his forehead, the sound the beam had made when he slammed against it. He remembers the ringing in his ears that had melted into laughter the way ice melts in the spring. He remembers hair that was like snow, freshly fallen snow, turned orange by the lanternlight.

He remembers hiding away a plate of fried tofu for Koutarou behind the sacks of dried herbs, only to forget, and for the thing to ferment a nasty smell.

He remembers the sound the stool made as he dragged it across the wooden floor of the tavern. He remembers Koutarou’s hands in his hair, pulling his fingers through the tangles gentler than Tetsurou expected he could. The scratch of the onyx comb against his scalp, the scratch of Koutarou’s fingernails. Kou’s whisper of _Your hair is so weird, I love it_.

(I love ~~you~~.)

He remembers, all too clearly, how Koutarou’s last words were _I love you, Tetsurou_ , all too clearly the feeling of blood pumping and pumping and pumping and not. He remembers all too clearly the way the shine had been sucked out of his gold eyes. His long white eyelashes laid over his cheeks like tears.)

You can’t remember things _painfully_ , but he thinks this might be just that.

Time passes different for gods. Time, it passes different for everyone, as long as Daichi slumbers. Things like _time passes faster when you’re having fun_ , things like _time is of the essence_ , things like that— they make Tetsurou laugh, because humans like making simple things complicated. Time is relative, time is numbers, time is _time_.

Five hundred, six hundred, seven hundred— years I’ve passed? Flower crowns I’ve made? (Thousand times I’ve thought about you— but that isn’t quite correct, no, it’s not—)

He braids moon flower crowns and he imagines what Koutarou would look like, fresh snow hair and gold piece eyes and crown made of flowers like fireflies. His eyes are so big they would reflect the moon— two of Tetsurou’s own little moons. He hadn’t been very good at making these flower crowns all those years ago; they’d fallen apart before he could place it on Kou’s head.

(He’d collected the fallen flower stalks and tucked them behind Koutarou’s ears. “Am I pretty? Like a fairy!” Kou had said. _You’re prettier than a fairy_ , Tetsurou had thought. But he hadn’t said anything.)

 _Why does it still hurt_ , he wonders, and this must be the thousandth year or so, _when I think about you?_

He hums as he sweeps. The birds join in, knowing his songs— his song. He only hums one song, after all. Has only hummed one song for the last millennium. Swup, swup, the bristles against pathstones smoothed down by his feet. He thinks he hears footsteps, but the only footsteps he hears around here are animal ones. He hums louder, and the birdsong swells along.

Someone coughs. Clears their throat.

(He whirls around, because animals don’t cough with human voices. Animals don’t clear their throats.)

He whirls around, and a voice he hasn’t heard in a thousand years says:

“Hey, Kuro.”

-

And a snowflake in summer is as rare as true love;

Tell me your story, someone says.

So Tetsurou opens his mouth, and says, “When I was a thousand years old, I worked in a tavern.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me on twitter @[yechenz](https://twitter.com/yechenz) yayaya


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